Not Your Girl
by Sleepy Lotus
Summary: Set after Hornet's nest. After settling her affairs in Gibraltar, Salander decides to do some traveling in Andalusia, and finds unexpected medicine in a little human contact. Salander/original character.


**Not Your Girl **

**A Travelogue Through The Eyes of Lisbeth Salander**

Summary: After settling her affairs in Gibraltar, Salander decides to do some traveling in Andalusia, and finds unexpected medicine in a little human contact. Salander/original character, rated T.

Lisbeth Salander looked around, and decided late August must be the perfect time to visit Germany. That was because all Germans apparently migrated to Andalusia at this time of year, armed with cameras, sunscreen, and itineraries carefully planned out in guidebooks. Munich and Hamburg were probably ghost towns, she reasoned, and listened to an older group complain of their southern neighbors' laid back attitude in the service sector, and the way cities shut down from 14:00 to 17:00 for siesta, with some amusement. She for one enjoyed breaking for a nap. When the temperature reached the 40's in the brutal midday heat, it was almost essential to survival, or at least keeping one's sanity.

The cats of Granada had the right idea. Peering over the edge of the river walk, she counted eight lean felines lazing in the shade provided by towering sycamores down below, and five kittens. There was actually water in the river, apparently an anomaly for this late in the summer, but snow had been generous the previous winter. Too generous; for three days the city shut down, lacking equipment to clear the powdery nuisance.

What was Salander doing in Granada? She wasn't quite sure herself. She'd gone to Gibraltar to check on her affairs, instill the fear of god once more in that rat lawyer of hers, and then found herself at odds. Her father was dead, and her half brother too. The trial a distant dream. No one hunted her any longer, at least as far as she knew. Suddenly, she had _time_. She was free in every sense of the word, finally a full-fledged citizen of Sweden, and in possession of more money than she knew what to do with.

So, she'd decided to see some of southern Spain, before heading back home.

Salander found travel equally exhilarating and exhausting. She loved the triumph in discovering new places, conquering unknown territory and learning some of its secrets before moving on to the next place on the map. She liked the ornate architecture and strange plants and white-sanded shorelines that stretched on for kilometers and kilometers. Parrots that streaked the sky like emeralds with wings, screeching loudly as they passed overhead. Statues of dead men on horses whose strings of accomplishments she held no interest in, presiding over busy plazas.

None of these things demanded interaction from her of any sort. They did not try to talk to her, they did not feel an insecure need to fill a void with chatter. They did not want her smile, her attention, or her number. Salander never ceased to wonder at most people's complete inability to be comfortable in their own skin, to sit in silence for even an hour without filling it with some sort of inane chatter.

She'd adopted a motto, this trip, a mantra she found herself repeating in every city she passed through.

_I'm not your girl. _

In Tarifa, her first stop from Gibraltar, there'd been the Moroccan wind surf instructor who tried to hook her right off the bus. Not much taller than her and skinny as a reed, cocky and traipsing about without a shirt to show off an eight pack abdomen, skin browned to a deep mahogany from hours and hours passed in the sun. He reminded her of a half-sized Lenny Kravitz, with a fro of curls held at bay by a sun visor. He'd pegged her for German right away understandably, as the rest of Germany was already at the beach. _I know you don't usually do this in the north, but I'm leaving and have keys for an apartment for a couple more weeks. You want a free place to stay?_

He sized her up with hungry black eyes, a look that said he felt certain he already owned her.

She wondered how many girls had fallen for this spiel before her.

_ Get lost _she instructed. Naturally, he didn't listen. _Make yourself useful then. Where's Avenida de Andalusia?_

_We don't really use street names around here _he replied, with a look that implied it was _uncool _to even ask. She understood that many young girls would cave under this pressure, those eyes challenging, _you aren't square, are you?_

_Well that's interesting. Because in the rest of the world we organize our cities with street names and numbers._

He tried to lead her the wrong way three times, counsel she ignored while following the map, before she slammed the door of her hotel in his face.

The rest of Tarifa wasn't all bad. The wind was a bracing and a blessedly cool thing, and the glittering water the color of a fine aquamarine. She sat for hours on the shoreline with a bag full of fruit, watching the waves and swaying with their eternal rhythm.

There'd been the twitchy Italian on the bus to Seville. He'd talked to himself and couldn't stay on his side of the seat for anything. He clapped nervously along to the campy Spanish music on the radio, on a schedule and wishing the bus driver would stop braking for pedestrians.

A flamenco master he was not; she'd just seen the real thing in Jerez de la Frontera, in a Gitano dive tucked deep in the winding alleys of the Barrio de Santiago.A whole family who still devoted themselves to the art, Grandpa on the guitar, his children and grandchildren singing and dancing. A toddler raced between the tables during the show, clapping along and stamping her feet, the rhythm already taking root in her little bones. She'd walked home in the dead of night with the satisfied feeling of having just witnessed something genuine. A rarity, in her life.

Salander made the mistake of removing an earbud to adjust the rubber piece, an opportunity the strange little Venetian pounced upon to start talking. He talked _at _her, delivering a lecture on the importance Cadiz once played in Spain's conquest of the Americas, all the gold that passed through the city, and the pirates who sacked her several times over.

At the end he'd requested her company to view the sites around Seville, the cathedral and the tower, then maybe a _copa de vino_, he was alone too and knew the hardships, _blah blah_. Then he begged. Then he guilted her, as she noticed Italian men were wont to do. _One has to take time outside of one's own universe to share a little warmth and insight with a fellow human being now and then._

Maybe it was true, but she found her fellow human beings to be infinitely disappointing, on the few times she did so.

Always, they wanted something from her she was not willing to give.

Or, worse, on the few occasions she found herself willing to give, they didn't want her.

She tried not to think of Kalle fucking Blomkvist, reminded herself of all he'd done for her, and not the heart he'd unwittingly tread upon.

_I'm not your girl._

Sevilla had been a city filled with beauty and riches, gorgeous pastel buildings, and significant history around every corner. The Alcazar turned into a Spanish palace, the Tobacco factory where the opera _Carmen _was set, the Plaza de Espana and its peaceful botanical park, the gloriously momentous Cathedral in all its gothic trappings. The river walk along the Guadalquivir ranked her favorite stroll in the city, but the young men with egos as tall as the Cathedral's bell tower stalking about in search of pretty tourists were not. _I like your accent, _said a persistent Mexican immigrant in halting English, after she told him succinctly to leave her be. Rolling along beside her at a wobbling pace on his bike, he ignored her, demanding, _Take off your sunglasses, I have to see your eyes._

She'd thought of the tazer in her bag. Old habits die hard.

She'd settled for shoving him into the river, bike and all.

_Told you_, she thought smugly, leaving the young man and his curses to drift with the current. _I'm not your girl. _

Salander found she liked Granada best of all. It was a glorious place to be alone. She would wander the winding alleys of the Albayzin, the Jewish quarter, and the Gitano Sacramonte for hours on end, marveling at the white washed alleys, the individuality in the houses, the bright flowers, the pita plants the size of a Smartcar whose twisting arms appeared to wish to grab passersby. She loved the designs in the sidewalks made of thousands of white and black round stones. There were habitable caves, and homes seeming to rise right out of the mountain, stacked on top of each other and cattycornered together. She would sit on the roof terrace of her hotel and watch the sun set behind the mountains with a cup of coffee and her book on advanced genetics.

At night, she would go out into the alleys, and lay out on a secluded rock wall, soaking up the warmth in the stones leftover from the blazing hot day, like a lizard. Stars blazed above, winking diamonds tossed into the inky night by the fistfuls. She watched the wispy cirrus clouds slip by across the moon, the mournful wails of a flamenco singer somewhere in the Gitano caves echoed throughout the city. She would nap lightly with her head propped on her arm, charmed by the breeze. Always, a gentle wind blew through the city, sweet dry air filled with the scent of the desert.

It had a rejuvenating effect, something she couldn't quite put her finger on.

Maybe it was magic.

A strange feeling ambushed her from the back door; with great surprise one morning over _café con leche_ and _pan tostado_, Salander realized she was _happy_.

Days passed quickly in Granada. She would sleep in, wrapped up cozily against the night chill that fell over the desert with the setting of the sun. She would shower, she would dress, she would breakfast. She would slip past reception, curious with a sidelong glance which fine specimen of Iberian masculinity sat at the desk that morning. She liked Spanish men with their shy smiles and laughing eyes. They gave up easily, leaving things with a wink or a playful call of _eh, guapa! _when she continued to go about her way.

Her favorite at the desk was the one with the beard and the warm smile, who would flirt lightly with her in between taking care of whatever minor thing she needed from the hotel. His eyes were the color of honey poured out in the sunlight, and she would remember them for the rest of her life.

Almost two weeks passed before she decided to cross over the line into being a real tourist, and went to see the Alhambra fort and palace complex. She'd eyed its beauty from across the valley, its sprawling sand colored buildings and rich green gardens, perched atop the strategic high point above the city. Most would take the bus, but she decided to walk. The path was lined by clear cool water running down the hill, brought in by the Moorish aqueducts. They were masters of corralling water, it was one of the reasons they remained so strong for so long.

She marveled at the sheer size of the walls of the fort, and the roses of the General Life gardens; they were the sweetest she'd ever smelled. Bougainvillea bloomed in riotous explosions of color over the walls. Looking over the beautiful white washed city across the valley from the watch tower, Salander felt an empathy for the Moors who were forced to abandon their home by the Catholics in the 1400s.

She too would soon have to leave this bewitching place.

With an eye for detail, she drank in the supremely delicate carvings of the Nasrid palace, fine as lace made of stone. Salander tried to imagine what it would be like to _live _in these rooms, to walk under these scalloped arches everyday on the way to breakfast, to prayers. To know a blessed silence in the gardens, to be able to dip your feet in the pool without hordes of tourists scrabbling to take pictures.

Tourists and their goddamned cameras came to be Salander's greatest annoyance.

She understood the desire for a personal souvenir, to have something to take away.

She pitied the morons who felt the compulsion to record every little detail, to capture every little thing in a digital file. With a surprising sadness she realized most of these people were so busy searching for a _perfect shot_, they weren't really _seeing _the splendor around them. In the frenzied rush to take this moment with them, to keep it forever, they inevitably missed out on the experience.

It was man's battle with accepting his own mortality, in the form of point and shoot. At first she tried to be courteous, to wait while pudgy joe blow in his stupid straw hat and photographer's vest held up the line of people waiting to pass. She would find herself wandering right into someone's viewfinder, and apologize, quickly move away. It became like navigating a minefield, and Salander quickly lost her patience with it. She wanted to shout out _just enjoy it now, you're all going to die! _but settled for slipping a middle finger into the picture at choice moments.

A geriatric gipsy woman caught her on the hike back down the hill, offering her a sprig of fragrant sage, and a palm reading. Though she was sure it was all bullshit, she couldn't understand much Spanish but caught the implications of long life and some compliments on being such a beautiful and sweet girl (had the _gitana _only known), she gave the woman a handful of Euros anyway. No one should be that old and have to climb that hill to pander to tourists in such bracing heat.

She pressed the sage in her genetics book, for some personal compulsion she didn't quite understand.

Maybe she too experienced a version of the human compulsion to hold on to a moment.

Salander had become a bit too familiar with the gates of death recently, and she'd become _quite_ interested in appreciating her present moment, even if she chose with her usual extreme introversion to spend it alone.

So perhaps it was with some irony, that in the city of Granada she found companionship. With a memory that missed little, Salander watched the change of the guard as the days went by. She knew exactly what time of the afternoon to perch on a wall outside the hotel, waiting for her handsome honey-eyed receptionist to finish his shift.

Alejandro paused at finding her sitting in wait, pulling on a cigarette. She gave the Spanish brand Fortuna a try, and liked them well enough. "So, what are your plans for tonight?" she asked.

Usually, his plans involved returning to his apartment, having a shower, supper, and collapsing into bed, only to wake up early and do it all over again. It was the monotony of his life at that moment as he saved money for a trip to South America. But he liked this small woman with her crooked smile. She was different from the other tourists who passed through, though he couldn't exactly put him finger down on anything about her.

So with a noncommittal shrug, he sat down upon the wall beside her.

"No plans," he admitted. "Usually I go home and fall asleep."

There, that crooked smile. Somehow he suspected it was a rare thing, that this was a treat to behold.

"You could do that. Or, you could come out for a bite to eat, and sneak back into the hotel to make love to me."

She paid him a sideways glance, curious of his reaction. Shock was a tactic she depended upon in her interaction with the opposite sex. It usually gave her the upper hand, something a girl who trusted no one required for a thing like this.

Amused, Alejandro raised his eyebrows, lips curled in an interested smile.

Well that certainly _would _be a break from the monotony of his days.

He eyed this woman, _Elizabeth_, according to her passport, though she insisted on the less formal _Lisbeth_. Her bone structure was pretty and delicate, almost doll like, but her eyes were like twin storms, quick and intelligent and intense. He got the feeling that kissing her might be a bit like sticking one's tongue into an electrical socket, but he imagined it would be a good thing.

As it turned out, he didn't regret saying _yes. _

Lovemaking after dinner became a routine for more than a week, and as she sat on the bed in the cradle of his body, enjoying a back massage executed by intuitive hands, Alejandro found the scars from her bullet wounds. He admired her dragon tattoo; it was pure art, a magnificent piece that curled around her back in flashy coils and stormy oriental clouds. He'd happily come to know almost every inch of her, but he was surprised to find the irregular skin beneath the couple of inches of hair grown out since her disaster with Zalachenko.

"What happened here?" he asked, gently feeling the scar. She was a private person, but he thought she might tell him.

Much to her surprise, she gave him the truth. "My own father tried to kill me with a .22 to the back of the head."

Alejandro's hands paused upon her shoulders, and somehow she knew he finally connected the dots. That she was _that _Lisbeth Salander, the woman the media made such a fuss over, the _Lesbian Satanist _and other such nonsense put down the drain when the truth came out in her momentous trial. The Spanish newspapers had mentioned it here and there, in between gossiping about Penelope Cruz's latest boyfriend, and F.C. Barcelona's conquests.

Lisbeth's shoulders stiffened. She felt certain she'd ruined this perfect thing between them somehow. He would start to pity her, or some other useless nonsense, and she would have to send him away.

She didn't need anyone's pity.

Mostly, all she really wanted was to be left alone.

But Alejandro proved to be wise. He pulled her close in a hug, his hairy chest a soft blanket against her back. They were as night and day, his toasted brown skin against the pale ivory of hers. "I'm glad he failed," he simply said, kissing her cheek, and returned to working the knots from her muscles.

Salander fought not to sigh with relief. "How glad?" she asked, turning to straddle him.

They didn't speak any more of it, but he managed to show her just fine.

On her last day in Granada, and Alejandro's day off, the pair perched upon the wall of the Mirador St. Nicolas, devouring a pile of fruit, making fun of the tourists who passed below, completely lost in the confusing alleys. Lisbeth didn't feel like a tourist anymore. She felt quite at home in this Andalusian gem of a town, and knew she'd be leaving a piece of her soul behind when she returned to Sweden.

Looking at her closely in the bright sunlight, instead of the usual darkness or dim glow of their room at the hotel, Alejandro noticed the nearly invisible but telltale indentions upon her delicate features of former piercings. In her eyebrow, her nose, her lip and ears.

"So, why did you take out your body jewelry?" he asked, sinking teeth into a juicy paraguayo, a Spanish grown version of a peach squashed flat.

Salander did not brush off his question, retort with the usual _none of your fucking business _she paid most who questioned her. Alejandro was a quiet, contemplative sort of man. He watched life pass around him with those calm eyes, and seemed far more interested in understanding the world than forcing his mark upon it. She liked that about him, and so thought about his question in search of a real answer.

Why _had _she?

Was it simply time to grow up?

Not quite. And she still didn't care what people thought of her or her appearance. She supposed it had something to do with her experience in the courts, and finally winning her legal independence, banishing those who persecuted her for her whole life to jail and worse fates. Holding people at bay was no longer such a matter of survival as it was a personal choice, and she realized she'd used her piercings in a way as a porcupine uses its spines. Armor. A warning. _Don't touch me_.

"I guess I decided I didn't need them anymore," she answered, and Alejandro seemed satisfied with the response. She leaned over to kiss him, savoring his soft lips sweetened by the taste of fruit.

They decided to move on, taking a moment to fill a bottle at the public fountain, cold mineral water brought up from the aquifers beneath the city, untainted by chemicals. The taste was divine, beneath the merciless pummeling of the sun's rays. "So, when are you coming to Sweden?" she asked absently, as they meandered down an alley arm in arm.

She posed the question jokingly, though in a moment of alarm she realized she wasn't really joking. He'd gotten under her skin, just like _Kalle fucking Blomkvist, _and she hoped to see this man again.

With a tinge of fear tickling her spine, she awaited his answer, and her heart fell to her feet as he replied, "Too cold." She cursed herself for her misstep, for opening up. What did she really expect, anyway? "But you could come to Peru," he offered with a smile. Her heart then skipped a beat. Surprise. Suspicion. More surprise. "Or, I could visit you in the summer, when I get back."

He knew she'd been holding her breath, and pulled her into the crook of his arm as they walked, a hug she surprisingly accepted. Such an odd girl, fearless in some respects, yet _so afraid. _He understood her youth took her for a rough ride. He hoped that someday her wounds would heal. It would be slow going, but this was a start.

In the end, Salander gave him a card with her address and number. Her _real _address. It felt strangely like cutting off a piece of her heart, and offering it on a platter. "Well, this is me," she'd said. Somehow he understood she meant it in more ways than one. She'd studied him carefully as he accepted the card, tucked it into his pocket. His eyes were gentle, and his smile was warm. They'd enjoyed each other's company, but somehow managed not to _demand _anything of each other the other wasn't willing to give.

Was that what a healthy relationship between two human beings felt like, she wondered?

She found herself thinking with her signature crooked smile, _Maybe, I could be your girl. _


End file.
